Written by: Leslee DuPertuis, Colorado Master Gardener
What would Italian cuisine be without the tomato, right? Pizza sauce, spaghetti with marinara sauce or even a nice caprese salad. Italy produces more tomatoes annually than all other European producers combined. The truth is, the tomato didn’t even arrive in Italy until sometime in the sixteenth century when it was initially considered poisonous.
Tomatoes are actually a New World fruit with wild ancestors still growing in Peru, Ecuador and northern Chile. At some point they migrated north into Central America where they were first domesticated and consumed by the Maya. As they continued their journey north, they were readily adopted by the Aztecs which is where the Spanish Conquistadors first found them. The Aztecs called them “tomatl”.
Tomatoes were introduced into Italy via Spain. They were first referenced in print in 1544 by a physician named Mattioli. At the time the fruits were small, about the size of cherry tomatoes, and were yellow in color. He named them pom d’oro or “golden fruits”. Pomodora is the modern Italian name.
We know that Cosimo de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, had tomatoes growing on his estates but apparently, he never ate them. Italian cuisine at the time was very similar to that of other Mediterranean countries with plant-based staples being bread, pasta, olives and beans. Dishes were flavored with onion, garlic and peppers. Most vegetables were considered unhealthy. Dieticians and botanists at the time thought that vegetables could sap mental vitality. That is why most rich people, like Cosimo, primarily ate meat. It was probably the poor, having little access to either meat or medical advice, who first took the chance on tomatoes.
It was almost two hundred years before the first printed recipe for tomato sauce could be found. Francesco Leonardi wrote about his Italian tomato sauce in 1790 in the cookbook L’Apicio Moderno. The world then had to wait another 100 years for a “spaghetti in tomato sauce” recipe to be published, the earliest reference being found in 1844.
In the US today, tomatoes are definitely one of our favorite vegetables. Consumption of tomatoes is second only to potatoes. Beyond the traditional red ones, you can buy or grow tomatoes from yellow to orange to green. So, whether you like them cooked in sauce, diced on your taco or sliced in your salad, let’s all give a big thanks to this New World garden prize!
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/tomato-italy-history/index.html
https://www.ferraroslasvegas.com/what-was-italian-food-like-before-tomatoes/
https://authenticaworldcuisine.com/a-tomatos-journey/
Gentilcore, D. (2023) Pomodora! Columbia University Press.
